Let's stop talking about us for a moment, and start thinking about the future of the game. Most of these threads are wish lists about stuff we'd like to see in the game, and that's very helpful, but what we really should be discussing is ways that the returning game can remain solvent this time. There's obvious generalized things like bug fixes or having features that are novel. How about ideas for things that would make them money without screwing up the game's balance? Stuff we know personally we'd pay for. The whole business model of F2P depend on having a few players that spend inordinately while most people play free, at some 'muted' level. Well, here's one of my ideas:

I think a possible missed opportunity that SPM should have considered in addition to offering credit shop armor sets as they were would be a more expensive option of a "fee-per-part" ability to hand-design them from the archetypes. Again, pre-fab sets will be cheaper, so there's still a reason to get those instead of paying a premium for a custom fashion designed item.

Let me explain this a little better:

If you're familiar with the old eartheternal.info site, you'll know that Earth Eternal items consist of an archetype (a look, basically) and between 1 to 8 colors. Let's say as an extension of the credit shop, there was an interface that allowed you to take an archetype, colorize it as you see fit, and buy it for your character from the shop. This could, in theory, extend to other items like weapons or other accessories, though having weapons/items refashioning would be required to make it useful. I mean, if this were extended into a 'super-refashioner' it'll certainly increase its use (since refashioning for the resulting item is as assured as it is for the credit shop armor sets).

Does this mean you'll see a lot of people running around in dayglow, gaudy armor sets? Quite possibly, but they will have earned the right, as at least it means that (A) Earth Eternal is getting good money out of it and (B) players aren't using this to buy stuff that will give them an unfair advantage to destroy you in PvP. The money has to come from somewhere, and I'd prefer it come from voluntary, frivolous, and amusing purchases instead of game breaking stuff that allows other players to rub it in your face via power differences.

The question you should be asking yourself is, would you pay for the right to custom design your own fashion accessory? I heavily suspect you would, and there's proof of concept. On Second Life, there is a whole industry making money just designing apparel for the avatars there - I think MMO designers tend to overlook these non-game mechanics aspects because it's not a part of the cliched design. On top of this, repeat purchases are almost insured. Fashion is Addicting. You just don't buy one item. You buy outfits, usually 2-3 of them for occasions. And that means whoever is owning Earth Eternal will be able to pay the bills and not disappear like Sparkplay Media did.

i am a heavvvvy advocate of cash shop clothing and apparel. because its proven that people WILL buy it. ESPECIALLY if it looks cool and all they have to do is fork over a lil bit of cash. For example, Maplestory, one of the first successful F2p mmo's on the market, executes this very well.

It seems that the pay-to-win model is generally a failure, because people end up unsatisfied and will flame about the game and stuff. and angry people not buying/trying to get other people not to buy stuff/giving negative reviews and reports=bad revenue and rep on the company publishing the game.

Since EE was very good (pre-8.6) about customization, i wouldnt think it would be hard to implement a neat kind of clothing shop that used credits.

Also, many people will buy cosmetic things such as new hairstyles or extra face options and color palletes that are used on their character. Cuztomization really is something that a lotta MMO companies can cash in on without getting much complaint. because everyone has that desire to be "unique".

Another huge jackpot area that ive noticed would be the housing. If groves are brought about, that would highly benefit the credit shop. Because by creating a grove, you now have customers that would buy interesting or useful furniture and stuff for their grove to make their place look more lively and interesting. This is also not a game breaker, so people are happy and are willing to buy the neat furniture.

It also seems like it would benefit to profit a little bit off of the altaholics (people who are obsessed with creating alternate characters) by selling extra character slots. for example. 3 slots are noramlly available. if you want more, you can buy another using credits. That way, there are enough slots that the normal gamer is fine, but theres still the option to buy that extra slot if desired.

And what about this. little pets? im not sure if that would be popular or possible in EE, but if it was, having small pets would be neat. people like pets and if theyre cute and fun, people will buy them. Also if its not too "unfair" what if the lil pets did small things such as auto looting corpses you've killed...or let you have 4 more bag slots via their inventory? that way it would be samll enough that people wouldnt NEED to have the pets to do well, but itd be a nice lil incentive to buy one, along with their cuteness.

what we really should be discussing is ways that the returning game can remain solvent this time

Well I believe that to make the game more solvent you need to first generate interest. I think one thing that can be done to accomplish that is to give folks a reason to play. This is accomplished by creating goals.

Earth eternal though a fun game lacked a reason to go after some dungeon places or areas due to a lack of reward. Rewards in the game came easy, some of the best weapons in the game were easily gained by completing simple bounty quests and with the exception of a few hunt and find quest little quest variety was available.

Additionally skill and tact were non-existent. Characters had bow and arrows but couldn't shoot and hide from being seen and were auto attacked even when they missed. This placed all the players tactics on having the best attack resistance and made the difference between the character types less noticable and thus most players chose knights.

This was a gap it appeared that the game designers were working on fixing starting with 0.8.6 by removing a lot of the different armors, fixing classes, and fixing the gold standard.

I believe starting the game again with a fresh beta start will immediately help with solvency. Removing all the old characters that had gold hoards, making long range attacks viable and further differenciate the classes and fixing the quest rewards to actually enticing players to go into dungeons by making the rewards inside actually worth fighting to earn

but then your probably asking how do you make money with that? Simple, alongside the new dungeon rewards you have secondary fashionomics. Make the game free to play for all but the ability to get the truly special non status items like Robin Hoods hat only gettable by paid users or in time retrievable by play later in game.

To keep with Matt's vision of if you try hard enough you eventually can earn anything in game you still need to be able to earn those items another way. This other way needs to be extremely limited. I suggest earnable tokens that can be traded into a trader that is in a very dangerous section of the world.

If collecting rare artifacts becomes a secondary goal in the game as was prior to 0.8.6 I think people will front the cash and the new company could potentially turn a profit off cash shop purchases of keys alongside of other items that will help increase ones gaming experience.

I don't think anyone in this forum is requesting pre-made high level characters. I suspect most of us truly wish to financially support the game as well. Still, I am curious, does this hint that a character wipe is now certain?

. . . Also, Andrew, who do you want to win at the Grammy's? I want the Black Keys.

I don't think anyone in this forum is requesting pre-made high level characters. I suspect most of us truly wish to financially support the game as well. Still, I am curious, does this hint that a character wipe is now certain?

. . . Also, Andrew, who do you want to win at the Grammy's? I want the Black Keys.

Not to derail this topic (for long), but it's been mentioned over and over by Matt that a character wipe would be unwise - however for some reason no one really seems to believe him. Maybe it's the idea that the new company shouldn't be held liable for the old company's sold credits or be burdened with the issues that may have been created by its 10 month run of characters. There is something to be said for retention of the characters though. It gives people a reason to return, especially heavily invested players. On many MMOs, once you're established, that alone is reason to play again. De-establish someone's characters, if they put enough time in, and there is a chance you'll lose that player - especially if they have moved onto other games and that's the only immediate reason to return is not having to work their way up through all those quests again.

Besides, are you really gonna make Village Idiote repeat his performance of reaching not only softcap, but hitting level 55 again? You know he'll just go and do it again.

Yon, I have to say that this is a brilliant idea. I would definitely pay for my own armor and weapons colored the way I like it. (black, of course ) If such a system were implemented, it would increase revenue quite well. After all, who doesn't like to have their character look the way they want?

_________________Forsake theheartso thatlovecan never find its way in...

Yon, I have to say that this is a brilliant idea. I would definitely pay for my own armor and weapons colored the way I like it. (black, of course ) If such a system were implemented, it would increase revenue quite well. After all, who doesn't like to have their character look the way they want?

Even though the pre-fab armors are lovely, often they'll reach saturation pretty early, as people will go 'well, there's gonna be someone else looking like me in that set'. I mean, pre-fabs are a great idea and shouldn't be discontinued - they are a sure way to get looking good fast, being professionally designed to be thematically sound as well as - if implemented - probably much cheaper than custom-colored fashions. In fact, as they add new archetypes, they can start with putting out a pre-fab in that archetype and then offering it for premium-priced custom coloration after the set is discontinued. This will also fuel renewed interest whenever new archetypes are added.

I know myself that there were many times would look over my character and wish that some item I had were colored differently so I could use it with my current fashion. Or slightly adjust the green bands on my Bremen Musician's Shoes to match the green of my Adventurer's Pants and Leaf Hat. Or color that tan vest I found once which was a better overlap match to my collar, but didn't come in the purple hue that I liked which the Fake Unikorn Hide Vestment had. Sometimes I dreamed about having a bright red vest or blue shorts, but they simply didn't exist in the game as a drop -- that means that an opportunity was lost to sell me something that I couldn't get any other way.

Customers come in a few types in MMOs. There's the "Play-The-Game-Once-And-Move-On" Gamer, and there's the "I've-Moved-In-For-Good" Socializer. There's shades in between, of course, but I suspect this idea will be more popular with the audience that 'lives' in the game and interacts with others. Considering most of these people have already bought nearly everything else by this time, giving them something to sink credits into will re-open the pocket-books of that established, dormant audience... and reopen it regularly. The more the social community in EE thrives, the more call there will be for the use of fashion. Encouraging events that bring people together will encourage this behavior even more as "Keeping Up With The Ursines (Joneses)" becomes a factor.

There's probably a whole untapped subset of play on Earth Eternal that hasn't been explored dealing more along the lines of "Life Sim" that will probably integrate with non-combat skills later. In short, perhaps Earth Eternal could maybe use a little more crossing with...

...Speaking of rails, all of the dungeons and adventures in EE are totally on them. There's no change in any of the dungeons from visit to visit, and the items in the token chests are always the same. Even the drop tables essentially dump the same dozen items in your lap every 2 levels. In short, once you've adventured a few times in them, they're old and tired. Some of them are old and tired after the first time.

I think they need at least one dungeon that you can redo over and over that has random levels and items instead - Caverns of Chaos. For those of you familiar with "Rogue-likes", this is the sort of levels it generates. Never the same thing twice. Diablo uses this, as does Torchlight. Randomly generated items also drop there (random also in appearance and colors to draw in the fashion hunters), properly scaled to the monsters that drop them, giving much needed variety. Each level has a boss at the end.

The catch that makes this profitable? They're accessed by purchasing 'maps' from the credit shop, the higher level maps being more expensive than the lower level ones (a good guess I'd say is 5-10 credits a level - this is also something Torchlight does.) It goes without saying that people who have long finished their quests would thrive on these things, though they wouldn't be available at any levels that aren't already possible in the game, so no pushing past softcap. Others in your party can participate in them - could be quite the social occasion!

I think my only concern is getting disconnected while adventuring in an instance. I'm sure some sort of mechanism could be in place to save your progress until you evict all the monsters from it though.

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